R.W. IV - The Magic Labyrinth

by Philip José Farmer

  The screaming face faded. The black gunsmoke pouring in through the shattered windows and broken walls vanished. The windows and walls disappeared. The bass Russian artillery which had been counterpointing der Führer's alto soprano became muted, then withdrew, roaring sullenly. The droning which had been a counter-counterpoint to the madman's screech dwindled and died. That noise, he was vaguely aware, had been from the motors of the American and British bombers.

  The darkness of the nightmare was succeeded by the Riverworld's night.

  It was comforting and peaceful, though. Hermann lay on his back on the bamboo bed and touched the warm arm of Kren. She stirred and muttered something. Perhaps she was talking to someone in her dreams. She would not be distressed or bewildered or horrified. Her dreams were always pleasant. She was a Riverchild, dead on Earth at or around the age of six. She remembered nothing of her native planet. Her earliest memory, and that was vague, was waking in this valley, her parents gone, everything she'd known gone.

  Hermann warmed himself with the touch and with pleasant memories of their years together. Then he got up, dressed in the body-covering early-morning outfit, and stepped outside. He was on a platform of bamboo. Ahead and behind on the same level as his hut were many others. Above was another level of dwellings, and there was another above that. Below were three levels. All were continuous bridges stretching for as far as he could see to the south and terminating far to the north. The supports were usually tall thin spires of rock or irontrees; each length of bridge was seldom less than one hundred and fifty feet or more than three hundred. Where extra support was needed, pylons of oak or mortared stone had been placed.

  The Valley here was thirty miles wide. The River widened to form a lake ten miles broad and forty miles long. The mountains were no higher than six thousand feet, fortunately for the inhabitants, since The Valley here was far up in the northern hemisphere and they needed all the daylight possible. At the west end of the lake, the mountains curved into The River itself. Here the waters boiled through a high narrow passage. In the warmer hours of the afternoon, the easterly wind pushed through the strait at an estimated fifteen miles an hour. It then lost some of its force, but it was carried up by the peculiar topography, causing updrafts of which the inhabitants took advantage.

  Everywhere on the land, towers of rock, tall columns bearing many carved figures, rose. Between many of these were multilevel spans. These were of wood: bamboo, pine, oak, yew. At intervals, depending upon the weight the spans could bear, were huts. Gliders and folded balloon envelopes were stored on top of many of the broader spires.

  Drums were beating; fishbone horns, wailing. People began appearing in the doorways of the huts, stretching, yawning. The day was officially beginning. The sun had just shown its top. The temperature would rise to 60° F in the heavens, 30° F short of the zenith of the tropics. At the end of fifteen hours, the sun plunged below the mountains, and in nine hours would rise again. The length of its sojourn in the skies almost made up for the weakness of its oblique rays.

  With two grails in the net attached to his back, Hermann climbed down the fifty feet to the ground. Kren had no duties today and so would sleep in. Later she would come down, pick up her grail from the storage shed near the stone, and eat a belated breakfast.

  As he walked along he greeted those he knew, and in the population of 248,000, he could call ten thousand by their first names. The scarcity of paper in The Valley had forced a reliance on, and development of, memory, though on Earth his own memory had been phenomenal. The greetings were in the truncated, collapsed Esperanto dialect of Virolando.

  "Bon ten, eskop." ("Good morning, Bishop.")

  "Tre bon ten a vi, Fenikso. Pass ess via." ("A very good morning to you, Phoenix. Peace be yours.")

  He was formal and stately then, but a few seconds later he stopped a group to tell them a joke.

  Hermann Göring at this time was happy. Yet he had not always been so. His tale was long, shot with gaiety and peace here and there but in general sad and stormy and by no means always edifying.

  His Terrestrial biography went thus:

  Born at Rosenheim, Bavaria, Germany, on January 12, 1893. His father was a colonial official, in fact, the first governor of German Southwest Africa. At the age of three months, Göring was parted from his parents, who went to Haiti for three years, where his father was the German consul general. This long separation from his mother at such a tender age had a very bad effect on Hermann. The pain and loneliness of this period never entirely left him. Moreover, when he became aware at an early age that his mother was having an affair with his godfather, he felt great contempt, mingled with rage, for her. He managed, however, to restrain any overt manifestations of his feelings. His father he treated with a silent contempt, though he was seldom openly insulting to him. But when his father was buried, Hermann wept.

  At the age of ten he became very sick with a glandular disease. In 1915, a month after his father's death, he became a lieutenant in the 112th Prinz Wilhelm Infantry Regiment. At this time the blue-eyed, blond, slender, and passably good-looking officer was a very popular person. He loved to dance and drink and in general was much fun. His godfather, a Jew converted to Christianity, gave him money to help him financially.

  Shortly after World War I starred, a painful arthritis in his knees hospitalized him. Eager to get into action, he left the hospital and became an observer in the plane of a friend, Lörzer. For three weeks he was unofficially absent without leave from the army. Though he was judged unfit to serve in the infantry because of his physical incapacity, Göring joined the Luftwaffe. His vigorous and unorthodox language amused the Crown Prince, who was commanding the 25th Field Air Detachment of the Fifth Army. In the autumn of 1915 he went through the Freiburg Aviation School, easily qualifying as a pilot. In November 1916 he was shot down, badly hurt, and was .out of action for six months. Despite this, he flew again. His rise was rapid since he was not only an excellent officer and flier but an outstanding organizer.

  In 1917 Hermann received the Ordre Pour le Mérite (the German equivalent of the Victoria Cross) in acknowledgment of his leadership qualities and for having shot down fifteen enemy planes. He was also given the Golden Airman's Medal. On July 7, 1918, he was made commander of Geschwader 1, its commander Richthofen having been killed after eighty victories. Göring's great interest in technical details and problems of equipment made him a natural for his position as commander. His deep knowledge of all aspects of aerial warfare was to stand him in good stead in later years.

  By the time Germany surrendered, he had thirty enemy planes to his credit. But this did not do him any good during the period immediately following the end of the war. Aces were a drug on the market.

  In 1920, after some time barnstorming in Denmark and Sweden, he became flight chief of the Svenska Lufttrafik in Stockholm, Sweden. Here he met Karin von Kantznow, sister-in-law of the Swedish explorer Count von Rosen. He married her, though she was a divorcee and mother of an eight-year-old boy. He was a good husband to her until she died. Despite his later career in an organization distinguished for gross immorality, he was faithful to her and to his second wife. Sexually, he was a puritan. He was also a political puritan. Once having given his loyalty, he did not withdraw it.

  It was a wonder that he ever amounted to anything. Though he dreamed much of advancement to high positions and wealth, he drifted. Without any guiding light, he allowed chance people and events to carry him along.

  It was his fortune, or misfortune, that he met Adolf Hitler.

  During the abortive Putsch of 1923, in Munich, Göring was wounded. He escaped the police for a while by taking refuge in the home of Frau Ilse Ballin, wife of a Jewish merchant. Göring did not forget this debt. He aided her during the persecution of the Jews after Hitler became head of the German state, and he arranged for her and her family to flee to England.

  Breaking his word of honor that he would not escape after his arrest, he fled to Austria. Here the
badly infected wound hospitalized him, forcing him to take morphine for the pain. Sick and penniless, his virility affected by various operations, he became mentally depressed. At the same time, his wife's health, never good, was getting worse.

  Now a drug addict, he went to Sweden, where he spent six months in a sanitorium. Discharged as cured, he returned to his wife. All seemed hopeless, yet, having hit the bottom, his spirits rose, and he began to fight. This was typical of him. Somehow, from somewhere, he gathered his energy to fight when all seemed lost.

  On returning to Germany, he rejoined Hitler, whom he believed to be the only man who could make Germany great again. Karin died in Sweden in October 1931. He was with Hitler in Berlin then, meeting Hindenburg, who had decided that Hitler would become his successor as head of the state. Göring always felt guilty because he had chosen to be with Hitler instead of with Karin when she was dying. Her death drove him back to morphine for a while. Then he met Emmy Sonnemann, an actress, and married her.

  Though he had great talents as an organizer, Göring was inclined to be sentimental. He also had a hot temper which allowed his tongue to run away with him. During the trial of the men charged with burning the Reichstag building, Göring made wild accusations. Dimitrov, the Bulgarian Communist, coolly exposed the illegal methods and illogicality of the charges against him. Göring's failure to control the trials spoiled their propagandists effect and demolished the false facade of the Nazis' propaganda machine.

  Despite this, Göring was given the job of forming the Reich's new air force. He was no longer the slender ace, having put on much weight. But his double personality had won him two new titles, Der Dicke (The Fatty) and Der Eiserne (The Man of Iron). His rheumatism was giving him pains in the legs and making him take drugs (chiefly paracodeine).

  He was not a scholar or a writer, but he did dictate, a book, Germany Reborn, which was published in London. He had a passion for the works of George Bernard Shaw and could quote long passages from them. He also was familiar with the German classics, Goethe, Schiller, the Schlegels, et al. His love of paintings was well known. He had a fondness for detective stories and for mechanical toys and gadgets.

  By now he dreamed of a Göring dynasty, one which would last a thousand years and forever impress his name in history. It was highly probable that Hitler would have no child, and he had named Göring as his successor. This dream was shattered when his only child, a girl, Edda, was born. Emmy was not going to have any more children, and it was unthinkable to him to divorce her and take a wife who might produce sons. Though he must have been intensely disappointed, he did not reveal it. He loved Edda, and she loved him to the end of her life.

  Another aspect of his puzzling persona was demonstrated when he visited Italy on a diplomatic mission. The King and the Crown Prince took him on a deer hunt. The three stood on a high platform while hundreds of deer were herded past them. The royalty slaughtered them, the King killing one hundred and thirteen. Göring was so disgusted that he refused to shoot at all.

  Nor did he want to invade Czechoslovakia and Austria, and he especially objected to the invasion of Poland. Thought of war depressed him; he had been in low spirits at the idea just before both World War I and II. Nevertheless, he went along with his beloved leader in this matter, just as he had not protested publicly against the persecution of the Jews. But at his wife's request, he saved dozens of Jews from imprisonment.

  In 1939 Hitler promoted Hermann to Field Marshal and made him Economic Minister of the Reich. As Air Minister of the Luftwaffe he was also its commander-in-chief. He tried to get a stratobomber built which would attain a twenty-mile altitude and fly to America, but he did not succeed.

  Despite his high positions, he had a tendency to turn away from realities. In 1939 he told the German public, "If any enemy bomber reaches the Ruhr, my name is not Hermann Göring. You can call me Meier." ("Meier" was a folk-joke name, indicating a mythical character who bumbled and numb-skulled his way through life.)

  After a while, Göring was often called Meier by the Nazi Party bigwigs and by the public. But the affectionate feeling implicit in Der Dicke was missing in Meier. The British and American bombers were making a shambles of Germany. The Luftwaffe had failed to soften England for invasion, and now it was failing to turn back the hordes of metal birds dropping deadly eggs onto the Reich. Hitler blamed Göring for both, though it was Hitler's decision to bomb the English cities instead of first wiping out the Royal Air Force bases that was responsible for the Germans' plight. Just as Hitler's decision to attack neutral Russia before England was laid low was ultimately the cause of Germany's downfall.

  As it was, Hitler had wanted to invade Sweden, too, when Norway was taken. But, Göring, loving Sweden, had threatened to resign if Sweden was attacked. He had also pleaded the advantages of a neutral Sweden to Hitler.

  His health had been getting worse before the war. During the great conflicts, his sicknesses and his lessening prestige made him turn to drugs. He was anxious, nervous, and given to melancholia, on the skids, out of control, and no way to stop the descent. And his beloved country was heading toward the Gotterdammerung which horrified him but which, in a strange way, gratified Hitler.

  With the Allies advancing across Germany on all fronts, Göring thought that it was time for him to take over the government. Der Führer, instead, stripped him of all his titles and positions and expelled him from the Nazi Party. His worst enemy, Martin Hermann, ordered his arrest.

  Near the end of the war, while trying to flee the Russians, he was taken into custody by an Army lieutenant, ironically, a Jew. During his trial at Nuremberg, he defended himself but with a lack of conviction. Despite what Hitler had done, he defended him, too, loyal to the end.

  The verdict was inevitable. He was sentenced to be hanged. The day before his execution, October 15, 1946, he swallowed one of the cyanide capsules he had hidden in his cell and died. He was cremated, and the ashes were, according to one story, flung onto a refuse heap in Dachau. Another, with more authority, says that the ashes were dropped onto a muddy country road outside Munich.

  That should have been the end. Göring was glad to die, glad to be rid of his sicknesses of body and soul, of the consciousness of his great failure, and of the stigma as a Nazi war criminal. The only thing he regretted about dying was that his Emma and little Edda would be left unprotected.

  18

  * * *

  But it was not the end. Like it or not, he had been resurrected on this planet. He was young in body again, a slender youth. How or why, he did not know. He was rid of his rheumatism, his swollen lymph glands, and the dependency on paracodeine.

  He resolved to set out to look for Emma and Edda. Also, to find Karin. How he would be able to have both his wives was something he did not care to contemplate. The search would be long enough for thinking about this.

  He never found them.

  The old Hermann Göring, the highly ambitious and unscrupulous opportunist, still lived in him. He did many things of which he became deeply ashamed and remorseful when, after many adventures and much wandering,* he was converted to the Church of the Second Chance. This happened suddenly and dramatically, much like the conversion of Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, and it took place in the small and sovereign state of Tamoancan. This was composed chiefly of tenth-century Nahuatl-speaking Mexicans and twentieth-century Navahos. Hermann lived in the newcomers' hall until he was thoroughly grounded in the tenets and disciplines of the Church.

  *{See To Your Scattered Bodies Go for the details}

  He moved out then into a recently abandoned hut. After a while, a woman named Chopilotl was living with him. She, too, was a Chancer, but she insisted that they keep in their hut a soapstone idol. It was a hideous figure about thirty centimeters high, addressed as Xochiquetzal, the divine patroness of sexual love and childbirth. Chopilotl's adoration of the goddess signified her passion for passion. She demanded that Hermann and she make love in front of the idol in the light
of torches flanking it. Hermann did not mind that, but he did tire of the frequency of her insistence.

  Also, it seemed to him that she shouldn't be allowed to worship a pagan divinity. He went to his bishop, a Navaho who had been a Mormon on Earth.

  "Yes, I know she has that statue," Bishop Ch'agii said. "The Church doesn't countenance idolatry or polytheism, Hermann. You know that. But it does permit its members to keep idols, provided that the owner fully realizes that it is only a symbol. Admittedly, this is dangerous, since the worshiper too easily takes the symbol for the reality. This failing wasn't confined to the primitives, you know. Even the so-called civilized peoples were sucked into this psychological trap.

  "Chopilotl is rather literal-minded, but she's a good person. If we got too stubborn about her idiosyncracy and demanded that she cast the idol out, she might backslide into a genuine polytheism. What we are doing might be called theological weaning. You have seen how many idols there are around here, haven't you? Most of them at one time had a multitude of worshipers. But we have gradually detached the religionists from them, achieving this through a patient and gentle instruction. Now the stone gods have become only objets d'art to most of their former worshipers.

  "In time, Chopilotl will come to regard her goddess as such. I'm banking on you to assist her to get over her present regrettable attitude."

  "You mean, give her a theological goose?" Hermann said.

  The bishop looked surprised, then he laughed. "I had my

  Ph.D. at the University of Chicago," he said. "I do sound stuffy, don't I? Have a drink, my son, and tell me more about yourself."

  At the end of a year, Hermann was baptised with many other naked shivering teeth-chattering neophytes. Afterward, he toweled off a woman while she dried him. Then all donned body-covering cloths, and the bishop hung around the neck of each a cord from which was suspended the spiral vertebra bone of a hornfish. They were not titled priests; each was simply called Instruisto, Teacher.